Euro 2024 was a tournament that will live long in the memory for the complexity of the third-placed group-stage qualifiers, long-range screamers and, curiously, star strikers who misfired.
Indeed, the bookies' top 10 pre-tournament favourites for the Golden Boot top scorer award -- a list that included the likes of Harry Kane (3), Kylian Mbappé (1), Álvaro Morata (1), Cristiano Ronaldo (0), Romelu Lukaku (0) and Antoine Griezmann (0) -- scored a combined 12 goals, while the tournament as a whole saw 117 goals in 51 matches, compared to 142 at Euro 2020. In the end, six players shared the Golden Boot award and half of them -- Dani Olmo (Spain), Cody Gakpo (Netherlands) and Jamal Musiala (Germany) -- weren't strikers.
But how and why did this happen? Well, Euro 2024 saw a huge variety of different striker roles used by managers and, when looking into what those roles entailed, you can see why many didn't consistently find the back of the net. Here we've analysed a selection and tried to explain why that led to the star men not scoring anywhere near as much as you'd think.
The Pure Poacher: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)
We begin with one of the major factors in this discussion: Ronaldo. The 39-year-old had a European Championship to forget for Portugal and his statistics tell the story: 23 shots, zero goals and one missed penalty.
The bigger the circle, the better the xG. Ronaldo scored no goals at the tournament.
Ronaldo is not alone when it comes to underperforming in front of goal during this tournament, but his poor form was particularly problematic for Portugal as they wired their entire attacking system towards servicing him with chances. That manifested in extremely talented attacking midfielders like Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva crossing rather than shooting when the latter was the better option, and all aiming for one man.